Saturday, February 19, 2011

Pizza Sauce



There's one hundred and one recipes that start with a plain old can of tomatoes. Here's a delicious one I saw on Jamie at Home yesterday.

Simple Pizza Sauce

Olive Oil
Handful of fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped
A few garlic cloves, sliced
One can of whole tomatoes
One can of tomato paste
salt, pepper
1 tsp sugar

Heat some olive oil in a large pan. Add garlic and basil, saute for a few seconds. Add the can of tomatoes, break them up with the back of a spoon. Simmer for 5 minutes. Over a bowl, strain the sauce through a mesh sieve - use a spoon to push as much liquid out of the tomatoes. Discard the solids. Return the strained sauce to the pan, add the tomato paste, salt, pepper and sugar, and simmer for another 5-10 minutes, until the sauce has thickened.

truffles and caramels


Candy and chocolate for your winter blues, although yesterday it certainly didn't feel like winter. Faux spring weather is trying to trick us into forgetting there's still one more month of winter to get through. These recipes are both from Not Without Salt.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Banana bread pudding and crosswords


The perfect saturday afternoon - baking and crosswords. Sometimes dry, stale leftovers are a good thing - like in this banana bread pudding I made up this afternoon! It's just stale chocolate chip banana bread, sliced bananas, and a bread pudding custard (milk, eggs, sugar and cinnamon). Who knew leftovers could be this luxurious?

Just look up some bread pudding recipes, and start experimenting with all sorts of fruit-bread combinations, maybe with some special appearances by nuts, chocolate or spices.

(Also, Wordplay is an excellent documentary, all about the NYT crossword).